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Africa's hip-hop heroes
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The Evening Standard, Africa's hip-hop heroes >>
BY: JANE CORNWELL
Daara J three good guys from Dakar, Senegal play hip-hop, but not as we know it. 'We're figureheads for the new African generation,' they say, sprawled on couches in a Central London hotel, heads nodding, gazes firm. As if to prove the point Ndongo D. (the shy, quiet one) starts imitating a beatbox, coughing up rhythmic, larynxwobbling sounds. Faada Freddy (the brainy, heartthrob one) comes in with a sweet, soulful melody from West Africa's Manding tradition.
Alhadji Man (the tall, extrovert one) does some rapid-fire rapping in Wolof, the trio's first language, dreadlocks swinging as he goes. 'Born in Africa, brought up in America,' Faada Freddy croons, helpfully, in English by way of translation, 'rap has come full circle.' It's a sentiment that informs Daara J's third and latest album, Boomerang. A big-hearted, big-budget mix of socially aware lyrics, Senegalese grooves and global rhythms a shimmy of Cuban rumba here, a jab of dancehall ragga there Boomerang is currently topping Europe's world music charts.
Indeed, Daara J won Best African Act in this year's BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards on the back of it. All of which has caused rumbles in the world music jungle, a right-on sort of place where hiphop, long regarded as an urban American genre, tends to be viewed with suspicion. 'Africa is the true ancestor of rap, as it is of all black music,' reasons 29-year-old Faada Freddy in a Stateside twang, a legacy of learning English in Frenchspeaking Senegal from radio, TV and US hiphop albums. 'We're saying that rap travelled out on the slave ships and grew up in the plantations of America. Now it's coming back.'
Loosely translated as 'school of life', Daara J (the J is pronounced as a G) made a vibrant British debut at Cargo last November, backed by a DJ on decks.
Kitted out in cream tunics they sang, toasted and rapped in Wolof, French and English. They did a fabulous a capella version of Bob Marley's 'No Woman, No Cry'. They danced a lot. They did their beatbox thing. 'We wanted to show London what Daara J is about,' Faada Freddy says, as Ndongo D., 30, and Alhadji Man, 29, flash smiles. It was a far cry from the home crowds of Senegal, nonetheless. There, in a nation best known for its formidable World Cup team and the African music superstar Youssou N'Dour, Daara J is a phenomenon. And a phenomenon among Dakar's 3,000 rap groups at that.
Rap-loving boys want to be them.
Boyloving girls want, well, at least to touch them.
'The crowd, drenched in sweat, engage in uninhibited physical expression,' wrote a reviewer in Dakar's Walfajiri newspaper.
'Security forces let people through one by one to touch their idols. But once they get close, the girls start to faint.' Faada Freddy shrugs, smiles.
'We're all married with young children,' he says. 'We have responsibilities to our families, to our country.' His beloved wife, 2-Tee, mother of his son and two daughters, understands that music is his job. 'OK, at first she was jealous. Now she is proud.'
Proud, he explains, of the way that Daara J tackle issues and alter perceptions.
Issues such as poverty, corruption, the importance of voting, the exodus of Senegalese youth abroad. 'Rap is all about the message. We say things like the ghetto isn't really that great.
That the ghetto can be changed.'
Not that Daara J come from the ghetto, exactly. All three have middleclass backgrounds. Their parents are accountants and teachers they'd expected their children to do the same. ('We had to convince them that you could be a rapper and still abide by your African roots.') Faada Freddy studied accountancy for a while, played guitar, piano and the thunderous sabar drums on the side.
Wordplay, however, came easily to him, as it might to one raised in a country where griots (a special musician caste) have passed information orally for centuries. When US hip-hop albums first hit West African shores in the late Eighties, he mimicked the MCs along with thousands of other urban African kids. They created their own version using beatboxes, percussion instruments and the rhythmic, alliterative Wolof language. Some, of course, were dazzled by the bling. Others put their lyrics to use. It's said that rap music even helped Senegal's Democratic Party win the 2000 elections.
In 1994, Freddy and fellow accountancy student Ndongo D. were in a group called Lion Clanwhen they met DJ Alhadji Man at Dakar nightclub Metropolis.
They pooled their talents and became Daara J. 'I was into soul music, Ndongo D. was into rap, Alhadji Man was into ragga. We put together those three pillars of hip-hop music and found a style of our own.'
They released an eponymously titled cassette, built a loyal following and made a lowkey tour of France. In 1998 they recorded a second album, Xalam, on a small French label and launched it on the island of Goree off the coast of Dakar, once the last stop for slaves en route to the Americas. They signed to BMG France and spent three years developing Boomerang's idiosyncratic sound, enlisting the help of guests such as Cuban visionary Sergent Garcia and acclaimed Malian diva Rokia Traore who they've just trumped in this year's BBC World Music Awards.
'I think we have been able to present an African rap that truly defends the movement on the continent,' says Faada Freddy, watching Ndongo D. and Alhadji Man rapping quietly among themselves. 'Now we want to set up our own record label, open a recording studio. Fame won't change us,' he adds with a grin.
'It will just open other doors for African rap music.'
Daara J, Sat 4 Mar, Cargo, 83 Rivington Street, EC2 (020-7613 7731) . 02/27/04
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